Conveyor belts are widely used in a diverse set of industrial and commercial applications. Many industrial operations, such as mining or other resource extraction operations rely on conveyor belts to move large quantities of heavy material between processing steps in the operation.
Many of these operations produce low-cost resources and depend on large high-speed, high-volume conveyor belt systems to provide the necessary throughput to make the operation profitable. In such operations, machine maintenance, including maintenance of the conveyor belt, and the resulting downtime, is carefully planned and scheduled to maximize productivity and, thus, profitability of the operation.
Contamination of the roller mechanism by dust and debris from the surrounding operation is a significant problem for conveyor rollers and can cause failure of the roller and result in costly unscheduled downtime. When a roller requires unscheduled maintenance, the entire conveyor belt system, and other all associated processes, must be shut down to access and replace the roller. The financial cost to an operation, associated with a process-wide shutdown, can be unacceptably high.
Accordingly, there is a need for seals that minimize contamination of the roller mechanism with dust and debris, during conveyor operations, to prevent or reduce unscheduled downtime of conveyor belts, due to roller failure caused by contamination of the roller mechanism.